


Always With You

by otechestvo



Series: Devotees 'verse [1]
Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-14
Updated: 2012-04-14
Packaged: 2017-11-03 15:58:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,743
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/383261
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/otechestvo/pseuds/otechestvo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>All kids are scared of the monster that lurks in the shadows of their room. Cody Foster still is. Probably because his monster is real. AU based on a creepypasta, brief mentions of Australia/England and Australia/America.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Always With You

**Author's Note:**

> My old Aussie and I came up with this AU after reading this creepypasta; http://creepypasta.wikia.com/wiki/Always_With_You  
> Better description at the end.  
> This was written March of 2011.

The first time Cody saw the monster, he was six years old.

 He had never feared the underside of his bed, or of his closet, or the corners of his room where the moonlight couldn’t reach. There was nothing scary about the darkness. He’d woken up in tears several nights, yes, but because of the images his mind conjured, not of any belief of creatures lurking in his room.

 It was an unseasonably warm night and Cody was unable to sleep. He’d tossed and turned and whinged for nearly two hours before he’d seen it.

 Near the window, under the hammock where the boy kept his cuddly toys, crouched a figure. Cody saw light hair, pale skin, and lots of blood before he started screaming.

 His parents had thundered down the hallway, and by the time his father knocked the door open the man had crept backwards into the closet. Cody continued to scream as his mother sat on the edge of his bed and took hold of his face, whispering hurried words of comfort. He had been unable to understand why his father had just hovered there looking awkward rather than protecting his family from the man Cody could still see thanks to a sliver of light coming from the hall.

With those wide eyes staring at him from the closet and no one doing anything about it, the only way to console the boy had been to let him sleep with his parents that night. In the morning, he’d scuttled along behind his father, clutching a cricket bat defensively as he patiently checked every nook and cranny for the monster. He came up empty, and Cody had wailed that he  _had_  seen something, that _something_  had been in his room.

 There was nothing his parents could do, and no bloodied figure to be found. And Cody developed a fear of monsters.

Well, not monsters in the plural. Just the one.

 He caught glimpses of the man throughout the next year, and every time he screamed until one of both of his parents rushed in to calm him. Sometimes, as soon as he blinked, the figure was gone, and sometimes he continued to lurk and stare and remain invisible to his mother and father.

 Once, when his father insisted he sleep in his own bed after waking the house at three AM, Cody watched in horror as the man crawled silently across the floor. He made no sound, even as he moved over the creaky spot in the floorboards. Cody saw that he looked pretty average. No fangs, no fur. He was just a man with a pink scarf, a white button-down shirt, and brown trousers. Oddly enough, his feet were bare. The front of his shirt was torn and soaked with blood, and the Australian could make out a large bruise on his jaw. Blood dripped from his chest and the back of his head and disappeared before the droplets hit the floor. Their eyes met for a brief second, and the shocking violet colour stared at him unblinkingly. Then, without any more fuss, the man slipped under his bed.

Cody didn’t sleep that night. He poked his cricket bat under the bed frame the next day before he was willing to set foot on the floor.

 Realising his parents couldn’t see the monster and were tired of comforting him in the middle of the night, Cody stopped throwing fits whenever he saw blonde hair and dripping blood. As the creature was completely silent, as long as Cody closed his eyes or threw a blanket over his head, he was okay.

(Cody named the man on his seventh birthday. He had been watching a special on arctic animals, narrated by a cartoon polar bear with a Russian accent and purple eyes. He’d seen the monster peeking at him from under his bed after getting a glass of water later that night, and screamed, ‘There’s an Ivan in my room!’ The name just stuck.)

Ivan terrorised Cody throughout his childhood simply by existing, although eventually he managed to convince himself that he was just imagining things. Everyone believed in monsters when they were little, right? Nothing strange about that at all. Didn’t make it any less scary, but the boy learned to deal.

 Until the first time Ivan touched him.

 (The first time that Cody knew about.)

 He was twelve years old, and he hadn’t seen the bloodied man for a very long time. He’d long since stopped sleeping under his blankets, and was sprawled out over his mattress as he drifted into the hazy middleground before dozing off. 

 Very distinctly, he had felt sticky fingers trailing down his bare spine.

 It was like a hypnagogic jerk. Suddenly Cody was wide awake and gasping with his heart pounding in his chest. He’d flailed until he was able to manoeuvre around into a sitting position, head whipping around in search of the familiar and haunting figure. Trembling, he twisted to touch his back, still tingling from the contact, and Ivan was nowhere to be found.

 Imagining a person was one thing. Imagining being touched was another.

 Cody almost considered going to his parents after that incident. As a preteen, however, he was embarrassed to admit that he was still scared of the creature he had imagined up as a child. He had enough trouble admitting to being scared of legitimate threats like hurting himself playing sports or the bully at school who frequently took his lunch money. He quickly decided that he would keep this to himself. If he ignored Ivan, hopefully he would go away, and Cody would outgrow him.

Hopefully.

 From twelve to fifteen, Cody was touched seven more times. It scared him silly every time, often smacking blindly at hands that weren’t there, and once or twice he was surprised to tears. He remembered spending the night at a friend’s house one weekend and feeling those fingers (sticky with blood, he’d realised) ghost down his neck. Afraid of waking his friend and having to explain the extremely uncomfortable situation, Cody had bit down on his bottom lip and squeezed his eyes shut, silently begging Ivan to go away. The touch had lingered that time, running over his collarbone. When the wandering trail reached his chest, the touch became an open palm over his heart, and the Australian was unable to keep himself from shooting up and clawing at his shirt. Sleepily, Blake had asked if he was alright, and Cody claimed to have had smuggled a spider into the house. It was a believable lie, considering the source, and his friend had rolled over and gone back to sleep. Cody didn’t have as easy a time, although his mysterious companion left him alone after that.

 With the frequency of the sightings and experiences declining steadily, Cody was able to lead a normal life.  He went to school, he played sports, he made friends. Puberty, as it is for everyone, was an interesting and uncomfortable time, and soon Cody found himself looking more closely at the opposite sex. Or, more frequently, the same sex.

 (Coming to terms with his sexuality wasn’t too difficult. There were some pricks at school, but his family and friends were nothing but supportive. He knew that he was a very lucky guy.)

 Cody lost his virginity to a British exchange student when he was sixteen. They were awkward and fumbling together, and only managed to fit a few flings into their busy schedules before Arthur went back to London, but suddenly there were new and wonderful doors opening for Cody. Sex booted sleep off the top of his favourite things to do almost immediately.

 And, of course, Ivan couldn’t let that slide.

 Cody nearly bit his then-boyfriend’s tongue off when he saw the tall man sitting in a chair by the window while they made out.  When their eyes met, Ivan perked a brow, the slightest hint of what looked like amusement crossing his bruised and pallid face. Alfred had complained and whined when the Australian pulled back, sputtering out excuses, but he really couldn’t be expected to perform with his childhood terror bleeding silently on his grandmother’s wicker chair.

 It was the first time in over two years that Cody had actually seen the man, and it was strange to see him looking… normal. Not creeping around on all fours and staring from the darkness, but resting in a chair like a normal person. Cody couldn’t imagine what this sudden change meant, or why he was starting to show up again.

 Being older and more exposed to the world around him, Cody knew now that seeing and feeling something that wasn’t there was not just unsettling, it was very worrisome. That was something crazy people experienced, and the thought terrified him more than the sight of blood dripping from forever-open wounds. He’d never had any other sort of hallucination or delusion, but he felt the one was enough. He knew now that he shouldn’t have named the thing, that thinking of it as a separate entity was several different levels of bad. He tried not to think about it, but that became difficult as Ivan became more active.

 He actually started  _doing_  things. He would sit at the kitchen table in the mornings sometimes and appear to read the newspaper over his shoulder. He would look at himself in the mirror while the other brushed his teeth, combing his blonde hair back and scrubbing at his cheek. The most unnerving incident was when Cody was showering and saw bloody fingers curl in the shower curtain.

 The teen knew he was mad when he instinctively covered his groin with his hands and squeaked at Ivan to kindly bugger the hell off. What was even more insane was that Ivan seemed to listen, and retreated.

 While more often than not he was a perfectly normal teenage boy, Cody accepted the fact that there was something seriously wrong with him. He still refused to speak to his parents about it, though. The last thing he needed was to be forced to see a shrink.

 “Why won’t you leave me alone?” He asked one night, while Ivan perched gracefully on the edge of his bed. The figment had never said a word or even made a sound in Cody’s eighteen years of life, so he wasn’t surprised when he just tilted his head slightly to the side in response. Miserable, Cody had sighed angrily, rubbing at his eyes with the heels of his palms. “You’re going to fucking kill me one of these days.”

 Ivan had smiled.

 One day, during the summer Cody turned nineteen, Ivan appeared in the morning and never left. That was unusual itself, as he normally flickered out when the Australian blinked and that was it for the day. But the man had padded after him as he left his bedroom, followed him around the house, and exited with him as he left for uni. That made Cody anxious, and his eyes kept flickering to the bloodied figure throughout the day. Ivan didn’t seem to be doing anything. He was just watching him, as always.

 But he was grinning. It was a wide, excited expression that lit up his entire face. When Cody moved, like when gathering his things and heading to his next class, Ivan bounded out of his seat and trotted after him like an eager puppy. It was extremely distracting, and, to be honest, a little annoying, and Cody did his best to ignore him.

 He brushed of his friends and was a little brusque over the phone when his mother called later that evening asking him to pick up some eggs from the store. He didn’t mean to be, but the constant presence of the man weighed heavily on his mind. Cody left his house in a rush, wanting to get home from the supermarket quickly before he made a fool of himself in front of someone, and didn’t realise until he walked through the sliding glass doors that he had left without shoes.

 (Fucking Ivan was messing with his head. His already horribly-disturbed head. Cody grinned apologetically at the cashier who wrung him up as he wriggled his bare toes against the tile.)

 He was halfway home when stars burst in his vision and pain exploded in his jaw.

 Cody forgot completely about his purchase as the carton slid from his grasp, eggs breaking and splattering on the hard sidewalk as he was pushed back against the wall of the building that had been empty for the last three years. He could make out a bulky figure blocking the fading sunlight, and a hand shaking his shoulder roughly. His brain tried to make sense of the situation.

 It was Robert. His former classmate who had dropped out a month before graduation, the one who had frequently stolen his lunch money when they were kids. He was demanding his money again, this time with a hell of a lot more swearing, and something about all of this struck Cody as hilarious. He didn’t laugh, though, and when Robert snatched his wallet from the pocket of his trousers he had shouted and lashed out. There was no way he would go without a fight.

 He never saw the switchblade coming.

 The blade sunk into his chest once, twice, three times before Cody knew it was happening. His mouth fell open in surprise, hands he hadn’t realised had grabbed the front of his attacker’s shirt unclenching and spasming. Robert released him and shoved him back, and Cody would’ve protested if all his attention wasn’t suddenly devoted to trying to figure out why he couldn’t scream.

 He slumped against the brick wall as his classmate fled the scene with his wallet, grasping at it for purchase before his legs failed and slipped out from under him. He heard the crack of his skull hitting the concrete but didn’t quite feel the pain of the impact.  Cody was in shock. It wasn’t until he looked down and saw the blood spilling out onto his ripped shirt that the throbbing pain overtook his senses. Panic set in quickly after.

 Still he couldn’t scream. He was choking on nothing, pressing his hands frantically to his chest as if that would stop the bleeding.  He began to tremble uncontrollably, and tears sprang to his eyes, and it was with absolute terror that he realised he was dying.

 And there he was. Cody wasn’t sure where Ivan had been this entire time, but something told him he had been watching closely. He was always watching. He let out a loud, agonised sob as Ivan knelt by his side, and, somehow, he wasn’t shocked by the feel of his bloodied hands cupping the sides of his face.

 “H-Help me, oh god, help, p-please—” Cody begged senselessly, forgetting who he was talking to, what he was, or what he wasn’t.

 A gentle smile pulled at Ivan’s lips, and when he spoke, it was in a soft, almost sing-song voice. “It’s okay,” He soothed, smoothing back the dying teen’s hair. “It’s going to be okay. We’re going to be together soon.”

 Cody didn’t understand. He never understood, and he let out a helpless sob and threw an arm around Ivan’s shoulders, desperate for even a shred of comfort. He was shaking and gagging and dying, and here was the being that had terrified him since childhood, holding him in its arms and pressing warm kisses to the top of his head.

 And even as he fought the idea of death, even as he struggled to keep taking breaths, Cody came to an ethereal sort of epiphany, as though a key had turned in his head and unleashed a torrent of new knowledge. He knew with a bizarre clarity that Ivan had never been a malicious or evil creature. He knew that he was loved, moreso than he could hardly comprehend. And he knew, with the tiniest feeling of relief, that Ivan was very much real.

 And as Ivan took his cold, numbing hand and dragged it over his own chest, over the wounds that matched the new ones that were causing Cody so much pain, he knew that this wasn’t the end.

 The last thing he saw was sweat-soaked bangs and violet eyes lit up with delight, and with a final choking gasp and a twitch of his fingers, Cody was dead.

**Author's Note:**

> I think this fic stands by itself alright, but my Aussie and I came up with a whole background for this universe so I'll give a quick description if you want it. Unless you prefer whatever background you came up with yourself while reading it, in that case feel free to skip this next bit!  
> In this AU, everyone has a separate afterlife, and their death is pre-determined. In their afterlife, they have a person, a Devotee, who will be what they need. A child, for instance, might have a parental Devotee. A married woman might have a Devotee that will be her best friend. Cody's Devotee is a lover and a friend. Ivan is attractive to him, and capable of protecting him and giving him the emotional support he needs.  
> So, Ivan is a being waiting in Cody's afterlife for Cody to show up. He mirrors Cody's condition when he dies, since in a way he represents his death. When he actually dies he'll be cleaned up and patched up.  
> Normally a person can't see their Devotee, but in this case Cody can, which isn't really a good thing as you've probably gathered.  
> It's... kind of complicated and silly, I know, but it was fun to come up with ahaha.


End file.
